Dude the samples out there are all the same. It’s all about HOW YOU USE them.
Most of the stuff the pros use in both those genres are 808s, 909s and old break samples, adapted to each track.

How to kick:
First of all, tune it and make it MONO.
Second, colour it if it needs it (saturation and/or similar)
Third, dynamics control (compressor, envelope designer, whatever it needs)
Last, EQ. Cut out the junk, and give the dominant frequencies a little boost.

Make sure the kick has its place in the mix. You can high-pass everything but the kick and the bass around 100hz, and you should make a notch in the bass for the kick’s main body. Cut out unnecessary sub frequencies.
Make sure the kick cuts through the mix.

For classic hip hop kicks, just make it muffled. Use a bit of dusty distortion and a low-cut filter, and cut the subs out.
For crunk/trap kicks, boost the subs and raise the low-pass a bit.
For House, Trance, and general EDM you’ll want the full spectrum of kick. Boost the click around 1kkz and 5khz, low-pass around 16hz.

Kicks are ridiculously easy.

There is no magic setting which works for every track, it’s ALL ABOUT SHAPING THE SOUND.

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Mike(13)a dreamer and a doer. An explorer of the m...(@iPrentice)4 years, 1 month ago ago

@manimal, Thanks for the advice man. Will definitely work on those things. Any compressors you recommend?

@iprentice, Different ones are good for different things. I don’t know many good free/cheap ones though, but I know that they do exist. Lots of em.

Depending on the DAW you use, there could already be a great one built into it. Live has a few good ones, and FL has the great FL compressor, Logic has some really good compression.

Personally I like the Waves compressors, especially the SSL, The LinMB and the Vintage compressor. Fabfilter Pro-C is the one I recommend though, because it’s extremely versatile and has lots of different settings.
UAD Pultec is another great one.

Then theres TheGlue, which may or may not be free. It’s also built into the recent versions of Live.

But the freeware and native ones are good too these days. As long as it does its job.
Learning how to use them can seem tricky at first, but it will become easy pretty soon.

Look, using pre-processed samples is very limiting, and they’re often very hard to fit into a mix. Most of the time they aren’t very usable, they’re just made to sound good on their own so people will want to buy the pack. Those kinds of samples rarely sit good in a mix.

Most producers only use a handful of samples. Basic ones. 808, 909, some lo-fi/break samples, and a few proper acoustic samples. Then they shape and layer them in various ways.
When you’re really happy with a kick you use, just bounce it from the track and keep it for later use. Build your own little library of samples that fit perfectly in your own music.

That’s how the pros do it.

Glitzy sample packs are just ways to make money. And sadly, people often confuse that kind of stuff for professionalism and start trying to mimic it, so the non-commercial samples sound the same.

@iprentice, Also, if you hear a kick (or other sound) you really like in a track, see if you can sample it. That way, you’ll get kicks that sound just the way you want.

A lot of EDM tracks have simple drum tracks at the start and/or end of the song to make DJing easier. That also makes it easy to snag a sample.

Almost all tracks have the kick in mono, so if you get rid of the stereo content (by phase inversion) you can snag some samples that would otherwise be masked by other stuff.
It won’t always be clean, but you don’t always need clean. Look at all that old sample music (such as The Prodigy,) none of those samples are clean but you don’t hear the leak once the sample is in the song.

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Mike(13)a dreamer and a doer. An explorer of the m...(@iPrentice)4 years, 1 month ago ago

@manimal, Thanks a ton man. Really appreciate the depth of your answer. You seem to be very knowledgable. I take it you make your own music. Do you have a website where I can check out your stuff?

But the kicks in those tracks aren’t sampled, I synthesized them from scratch. Actually, almost everything in those tracks is made from scratch. That’s the whole idea of the project, sound design practice.

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Mike(13)a dreamer and a doer. An explorer of the m...(@iPrentice)4 years, 1 month ago ago

@manimal, Really like your stuff man! Production is awesome. I’ve been stuck for a long time on my mixing and mastering skills. I could use a few pointers if you wanna check out some of my tracks. soundcloud.com/michael_prentice

@manimal, mind-numblingly benign tracks. Wouldn’t believe a word of it coming from a man who makes generic crap like you. Cooky cutter bullshit. I don’t know what coerced you to attempt making EDM, but stop. You’re embarrassing me.

@hybridext, Why don’t you share some of your work instead of talking about degrees? Because you seem desperate for attention like the arrogant musicians that don’t know how to promote themselves in a better way, just because they put their ego before their music. My condolences if that’s the case.

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Mike(13)a dreamer and a doer. An explorer of the m...(@iPrentice)4 years, 1 month ago ago

@manimal, @beyond, Sasho, I think you’re getting music confused with business, dear. And ‘Manimal’, there’s a reason I put it in quotation marks. It is equivalent to a PHD. I am an accomplice in Jazz music. I’ve also produced the David Markey band. I have done my grades and I don’t need to be vindicated by some college frat boy who’s stuck some loops together on Ableton. And please, enough with the ‘haters’ malarky. It’s just an excuse to say “I don’t like people having different opinions”

@manimal, Well I’m dreadfully sorry, with English not being my native language and all. I was born in Beirut.
I am a doctor in music, that is why I use the term PHD very narrowly.

And oh I’m sorry, I meant to say Massive presets, pardon me.

If you attempt to seduce me with your nonchalance then you’ve got another thing coming. All I see is a little ant, squirming and screaming to the world “I am big goddamnit”. Thinking of becoming the next Tool are you? Very sophisticated you. Big boots to fill. And sir, I’m afraid an overture is little more than applying for a job vacancy. Your role here is very small. I on the other hand am on bigger pastures.

@hybridext, “Sasho, I think you’re getting music confused with business” I surely doubt so. I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore. No music from you, only bragging about… nothing, really.

I haven’t seen discussion like this on this site about music competition, and even though you’re not contributing to the thread at all or coming with the intention that we could learn something from each other, I thought you’re kinda interesting and was curious how your work sounds like. Everything is off-topic now.

One of the reasons I don’t even share most of the music I started making 10-11 years ago is because I had to start hating visiting studios of self-proclaimed producers that couldn’t earn my respect, yet had a very high opinion of themselves and took an absurd amount of money from musicians they didn’t even like. Not anyone was even remotely passionate about music, except some of the artists that tried to work with those “producers”. I found that awful.

What is the “David Markey band”? Who is David Markey?

By the way, excuse my incompetence, but I had to google what EDM is, because electronic music isn’t something I’d listen to alone. So I found this and thought it’s hilarious:

“His bandmate Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo then added: “I don’t know EDM artists or the albums. At first I thought it was all just one guy, some DJ called EDM.” When asked if that was because it all sounded the same, he replied” “A little bit, yeah!” while Bangalter added: “Maybe it’s just one guy called Eric David Morris.””

@manimal, I kind of admire you want to make everything from scratch and I love messing around with knobs and ‘learn’, but if I don’t like some trick used by someone else somewhere I wouldn’t even get inspiration from the basic samples. I got bored once and made something with sounds of a nylon bag because it sounded like maracas. I also made a believable R2-D2 from Star Wars on the Reason Subtractor. And probably a thousand different things when I preferred to stay at home and tinker. If it isn’t fun I won’t do it at all. Speaking of fun, this reminds me to post my gypsy song from 9 years ago.

@beyond, @manimal, The pair of you need to stop rubbing each others bollocks. You manimal need to shut up with the pretentious crap and spare us the patronizing one liners. And Sasho, you’re just a depressive moron with an absurdly unhealthy love for anecdotes.

Sound designer my ass ‘Man’, I have my qualifications for a reason. I have a high profile in the city and have a rental studio with a pretty hefty gross return. It’s my profession. I doubt you make a living off it. I bet all your money’s made providing pseudo therapy sessions on here. And FYI, I was going to depart some of my knowledge until I saw your ignorance.. which I tend to see all over this site. A bit of a megalomaniac really.

And Sasho, you mentioned me failing at marketing.. but that’s a business front, not a musical one. I tour and stuff, if that’s what you meant. That is one of my means of promotion. And honestly, music is a product, and if you’re afraid of facing reality than go play pony’s. The producers are their to get your music to a bigger market. You had a chance and you blew it. I think it’s your ego that is getting in the way. In the words of Miles Copeland “get the fuck out of my office”

But I thank you for that tidbit Sasho. It was amusing. Daft Punk know it all.